ALBUM REVIEW: Shinyribs Gets Personal on ‘Transit Damage’
Shinyribs looks like it’d be a band as much fun to be in as it is to listen to. If you were the frontman, you’d get to wear a hooded cape that not only glows in the dark but flashes different colors like a lit-up Christmas tree and play all kinds of neat stuff that wraps up country, soul, and rock in a twangy package.
Fronted by Kevin Russell of The Gourds, a free-wheeling bunch of rowdies known (among other things) for their down-home take on Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice,” Shinyribs fleshes out Russell’s originals with brassy bombast and a gut-punch backbeat made for a gleeful, stomping, juke-joint throwdown. Although a lot of this band’s offerings sound like he grew up with swamp pop oozing from his pores due to his upbringing in Beaumont, Texas, and Shreveport, Louisiana, Russell came late to the table, developing a taste for swampy gems from artists including Bobby Charles, Fats Domino, Cookie and the Cupcakes, Dale and Grace, and Warren Storm.
Shinyribs is big production live, with 10 or more members stoking the funk fires. That sound is replicated on their new album, Transit Damage, with a good chunk of the touring band, including the Shiny Soul Sisters, Alice Spencer and Courtney Santana, as a celestial backing choir and the Tijuana Trainwreck Horns, a quartet of brassy honkers. Producer Steve Berlin (Los Lobos) throws in some keys on a handful of songs as well.
Russell sounds a bit more introspective on this outing, due to the urging of Berlin, who encouraged Russell to include some of his original material he’d been holding back for years because he thought it was too personal. The title cut falls under that category, a soulful invocation to stop regretting what might have been and get on with your life: “So don’t go round feelin’ inferior / thinking you’re less of a man / People’s wisdom is meager / And they’re always eager to tell you they don’t give a damn.”
“Reconsider It” sounds like Allen Toussaint wrote it and Al Green’s trying on Dr. John’s gris-gris cloak to deliver it.
“Simply Belong to You” funks around like the Muscle Shoals Swampers second-lining down by the bayou while Russell tries to decipher how this love business works: “Love is helium, not the balloon,” he muses before deciding that, for better or worse, “In a world opposed to simply belonging / I simply belong to you.”
Like a Gourds offering reconfigured Shinyribs-style into something that sounds like it came out of Cosimo Matassa’s famed New Orleans J&M studio in the 1950s, “Alphabeta” has the feel of one of Huey “Piano” Smith’s wild excursions, a grinding, twisty, back-breaking funky strut with Russell spewing a mouthful of glorious alphabetical gymnastics in the best incomprehensible rock-and-roll lyrical fashion.
Russell and company serve up a big banquet here, with a long buffet line of tasty goodies to pick and choose from. For maximum satisfaction, bring a big appetite and a take-out box.
Shinyribs’ Transit Damage is out July 14 on Hardcharger Records.